September 12, 2007
Three months
Sometimes words are the hardest things to say.
I struggle, quite frequently, with the fact that I am a writer who seems to have forgotten how to write. It does not make me question my identity, but rather wrestle with why the words no longer come.
I'm sitting here, with a decidedly wonderful zinfandel port in my glass, classic jazz playing, and undecipherable and wordlessly silent thoughts swirling in slow motion through my mind. Words used to drip from my fingers like honey, spurred into existence from images, scents, thoughts, ideas, and scant moments that grabbed my imagination and shook it until something beautiful fell out. Now my mind is molasses, giving up only lines here and there, nothing complete, nothing whole.
I go over what I have written recently, which does not take long. Not even six complete items in three months. Titles like "Ouroboros" and "Cantiga de Amor" flash before me - potential, but stuttering in the gate, not even making it out on to the field. My life is whitespace, and I stand before it, pen in hand, just staring. I am not pretentious enough to say that I am waiting for the art to be released; I am simple enough to say I don;t know where it's gone. That's not completely true. I can still feel it within me, but it is inaccessible, the faint murmurings that bubble up indecipherable. Writing used to be as simple as fishing - just drop my line into my mind and wait a short while for a nibble, and I would hook a fish of some size. Now my mind is saudade, as I wrote in "Cantiga de Amor":
Untranslatable expression of the soul
reaching out to the past and present
embracing everything, loosing everything
Transliterating words with something more
and in "Whitespace":
Let the violin play, pulling out notes like knots
like raw cotton, like cathedral shadows at twilight
haunting you with reminders
of your own vulnerability
of your own dreams, and losses
and hopes you yet still hold
So many hopes yet swirl themselves around in circles through my mind. Dreams like ghosts from a valiant past. And in myself I forget how much larger the world is outside of me. Other people with other lives, other wounds, other hopes. I must move beyond myself, learn to expand again, to feel deeper, further, more intensely. Breathing is a gift we do not appreciate often enough. Life is what I make of it. And sometimes...
"Life’s not all about what is
Sometimes it’s about what isn’t
At least not yet…"
I struggle, quite frequently, with the fact that I am a writer who seems to have forgotten how to write. It does not make me question my identity, but rather wrestle with why the words no longer come.
I'm sitting here, with a decidedly wonderful zinfandel port in my glass, classic jazz playing, and undecipherable and wordlessly silent thoughts swirling in slow motion through my mind. Words used to drip from my fingers like honey, spurred into existence from images, scents, thoughts, ideas, and scant moments that grabbed my imagination and shook it until something beautiful fell out. Now my mind is molasses, giving up only lines here and there, nothing complete, nothing whole.
I go over what I have written recently, which does not take long. Not even six complete items in three months. Titles like "Ouroboros" and "Cantiga de Amor" flash before me - potential, but stuttering in the gate, not even making it out on to the field. My life is whitespace, and I stand before it, pen in hand, just staring. I am not pretentious enough to say that I am waiting for the art to be released; I am simple enough to say I don;t know where it's gone. That's not completely true. I can still feel it within me, but it is inaccessible, the faint murmurings that bubble up indecipherable. Writing used to be as simple as fishing - just drop my line into my mind and wait a short while for a nibble, and I would hook a fish of some size. Now my mind is saudade, as I wrote in "Cantiga de Amor":
Untranslatable expression of the soul
reaching out to the past and present
embracing everything, loosing everything
Transliterating words with something more
and in "Whitespace":
Let the violin play, pulling out notes like knots
like raw cotton, like cathedral shadows at twilight
haunting you with reminders
of your own vulnerability
of your own dreams, and losses
and hopes you yet still hold
So many hopes yet swirl themselves around in circles through my mind. Dreams like ghosts from a valiant past. And in myself I forget how much larger the world is outside of me. Other people with other lives, other wounds, other hopes. I must move beyond myself, learn to expand again, to feel deeper, further, more intensely. Breathing is a gift we do not appreciate often enough. Life is what I make of it. And sometimes...
"Life’s not all about what is
Sometimes it’s about what isn’t
At least not yet…"
